Today the site received an e-mail by a Scottish trademark owning company 'politely' telling us to change the name of the conflicting paperweight.

To which I replied:

Quote

Your request is not reasonable and cannot be complied with.Trademark law is unable to change historical fact, nor can it be used to suppress or change Scottish history. It would be an abomination if it could too!

The weight and company are named in the latest news item on Scotland's Glass, visible to logged in registered users only.

Teehee... I suppose having blown 500+ assuming used an agent, they just googled and emailed all sites with a hit without making the effort to see what the site was about. Total abuse of TM concept. Now, were someone to put that weight on eBay and they emailed eBay the sale would have been stopped instantly.

I think it is about 30 years ago that I had to deal with a letter from an american attorney who told us to stop using the word "universal" in our brochures as his client had a claim to that name. He got a most amusing letter in return. It just serves to illustrate, there is stupidity and stupidity with a law degree.

Many years ago I was involved in preparation for a business plan involving several large firms and an 8 figure budget. The legal team gave the advice on registering trademarks and patents that the cost would be substantial and that the cost of protecting both would be beyond the available resources - summary just rely on secrecy or copyright as appropriate.

The problem with TMs is that thanks to immoral practice it has now gotten to the stage where it is perfectly legal to trademark a name of an existing and successful business. Start up in the same line of business and then stop the originator from using the name as well as handing over the website URL. Effectively stealing the years of work of the founders of the original business, invariably these are entrepreneurs that have created a business on tight budgets and huge effort... only to have some corporation backed pigs take over their trade and goodwill through legal stealth. Abuses of copyright law are seeing not wildly dissimilar situations, while at the same time other large companies are simply ignoring small peoples copyright as they know then cannot afford to defend it. It is madness. Problem is you are damned (to an ongoing legal bill) if you do and damned if you don't. The only solution to the knot that has been created by manipulation of legislation and abuse of copyright/trademarks systems would be an European Court of Human Rights verdict... cost astronomical. Present situation will very likely get much worse and a lot of people will lose much of their life's work.

and, if I understand things correctly, what they have trademarked is an image containing those words, not the particular words themselves. If you look at trademarks, as I do regularly, you realise that a particular word or set or words can be trademarked by several people, BUT in different classes. So unless you opt for every possible category and variation...

I looked at their website. Don't think they will stay in business long. Yummy mummies selling overpriced items IMHO. The particular glass items they use are certainly not unique. K's colleague's wife used similar in the same way.

We are being discrete here Jean, so no names.

PS To cap it all, the border around the words is "textiley" impossible. They obviously employed a professional graphic artist :24: :24:

If you log into Scotland's Glass the news item shows on the front page along with email received and reply. Once people start flexing Trade Mark laws it is best to be discreet as they only need to complain to a sites hosting company to create problems as hosting companies shy from legal threats. But mails sent to SG contacts are mails to the site and thus perfectly valid to be posted on site for the registered members, public leaves one open for idiots to make trouble. In the meantime I have clarified site ownership which is now a French company... so if they want to pursue this they need to take action in French courts, intimidation won't work

But as Christine has pointed out in this case, they lack a legal leg to stand on. To register a trade name fully really does cost thousands and is only really viable for large corporations.

Thanks Frank. Had a look on Scotland's Glass then at the complaining company's website. The name so obviously pre-dates their enterprise - how very silly of them not to check before firing off their request!